Causes of why Oil burns in your car?

[TNTrulez]

Originally posted by: notfred
You have a fuel injected car with an idle that's adjusted by a screw?

anyway: 136000 miles, burning oil, oil cap doesn't come off. Solution to "cylinder 2 doesn't fire" was "turn up the idle". Meanwhile, cylinder 2 (w/ no fuel in it, per your description) has been running solely on air for who knows how long, and the piston rings are probably burnt. Thus, oil is going out your tailpipes, cylinder 2 has no compression, and generally, it's time for a new damn car.

he did say he's going to toss thsi car

 

[T2T III]

he did say he's going to toss thsi car

No, actually, he did say he was going to use it as his "rally car" if he gets a newer vehicle. It sounds like it'd make a good vehicle for tearing around. If the problems are basically as notfred described, then it sounds like this car is going to be a rally car sooner - rather than later.

By not being able to get the oil filler cap off, this sounds like an issue to take up with the place that changes your oil. If you consistantly take your car to the same place for the oil changes, then that company should be responsible for resolving the issue with the "stuck' oil filler cap. Maybe, you should call the company that changes your oil in the morning and request for them to tow it over to their shop so they can resolve the issue with the oil cap. Since they were the one to put the oil filler cap on for the last time during the last oil change, I think the ball is back in their court. While you could be creative and try and find a way to get another quart of oil into your engine, I'd sit tight until you contact that company - they created the mess, now it's time for them to resolve it for you. Good luck!!

 

[blahblah99]

Oil can leak through a lot of places in the engine.. the most probably places are the piston rings (blue smoke out the exhaust after startup, or acceleration from idle), valve stem seals, bad head gasket, or oil can just leak out from your engine... Are there oil spots in your driveway? If there are, I might look at the valve cover gasket and oil pan gasket as those are the two most likely places it will leak externally from a car with that kind of mileage.

Originally posted by: The_good_guy
Last night I happened to catch my Oil light come on for a second and go off when I went into a turn. Today I checked oil.. I am way below the "L" level. I cant get the damn oil filler cap off or I can top it back. Its got about 3K miles on the clock now. The car is at 136500 right now. Oil change due at 136863.

Anyway what causes oil burn, what are the things to look for? I dont want to give it for service cause its going to be expensive as hell to fix it. If its easy to fix i will do the work myself but at this point I rather drive it till it dies and get a new car.

Any idea what causes "oil burning". I took a sniff of the "dip stick" and i can smell gas in there. Does this mean I got bad piston rings? I just had a new cat. conv and clutch put in..

oh well if i get a new car this becomes my "rally car"..

 

[The Stigenator]

The car has had new plugs and new cables quite recently (within 15K miles.. more like 10K - if I remember right I had the tune up done at 125K). The mis firing fuel injector isnt that bad as its stopped firing.. if that was the case i would find that the car would have no power.. the car runs fine otherwise. When I got it back from the last oil change (and when the clutch job was done) the mechanic said that my injector wasnt firing right. By dropping the "idle" and listening you could hear 1,4,3,1 . sometimes 2 wont fire properly. Anyway he said I could drive it. It was alrlight for a while then I noticed on sudden lift off of the gas and when it went back to idle (pump the gas) it would stall. So I used what I did on my bike (when i first had mis-firing stall problems on it back in 2001), I raised the idle and that solved the problem. No longer would it pause on cylinder 2 and stall, it would now continue on its way. Dont ask me why but that fixed the problem.

I will get a compression tester from autozone (they rent out tools for a few bucks) and test it out. I will put in 20-W-50 in there for the moment and see what happens. Its going for an oil change tommorow so that will be done there. The place where i had my last oil change was at Toyota dealer (it costs the same as jiffy lube but they do a better job and check a lot more things). Plus Roxanne is there.. though I wont know if she is in tommmorow..

I checked under the car and above the car.. there is no visible oil leak. So its definately burning it. There is no oil on teh floor.. but then i can say that for sure.. cause the place where I am parking for now is the place where Alethia's ford parks and it has that trademarked ford grease on the ground. But I did go under the car and didnt see any oil leaks.

Any more ideas?

The car runs fine otherwise. I can get to 70mph in 3rd and then go to 4th with no problems.. the power is there when i need it.. and so far i havent found a power loss (like I did when i blew my water pump the first time). I will take it up angeles crest tommorow after an oil change to see if there is a power loss. But I doubt it.

 

[The Stigenator]

afternoon bump

 

[speed01]

Originally posted by: MajesticMoose

Originally posted by: Pepsi90919

Originally posted by: The_good_guy

Originally posted by: ActPrincess
to find out if its a head gasket, take off the radiator cap and look inside. It there is a white milky substance in it, its the HG.

Not the radiator cap hon .. its the oil filler cap that has teh white stuff.. But I cant get it off to check that.

yes, the radiator cap.

no he was right, it's the oil filler cap.

Actually, they are both right. Depending on where the gasket has blown would determine if oil got into the water or water in the oil....

 

[The Stigenator]

UPDATE

I took it to EZ Lube for an oil change since toyota service is off today. I filled about a quart thru the dip stick hole and took it. By the time it got there the oil was black. Absolutly black, so they wanted to run a "engine degreaser" on teh inside. That ran for 15 minutes and then they did the oil change. My airfilter with 6000 miles was dirty as hell so that was replaced. They couldnt check my transmission oil cause they couldtn get the stripped bolt off. I have to take it to toyota to get them to take it off since they did it last time. But I am sure the system is sealed and I will wait 3K miles to take it to toyota.

After the oil change they checked the oil this time it was clean as ever.. so what ever that gunk in my system was hopefully has been taken out. Yeah the injector is failing (the tech there said that - he works on cars and knows his stuff) the whole engine was vibrating at idle. This after I had detuned the idle already. He suggested putting up teh idle a bit to keep it from shaking off the bolts.

I will keep you guys updated as time goes.

 

[Thegonagle]

Your car doesn't love you anymore.

It's probably time for a new Honda.

 

[cavemanmoron]

hmm i can go 40 in first,,,, rev it up After u add oil..
you should check your oil every time you get fuel, or at least every 500 miles!!
my car uses oil,leaks a lil burns; a lil, i switched to 15-40 Fleet oil, lots heavier duty,it helped some,but older engines/high mileage encgine usually use a little oil,
my '95 G-20 with 268,000 uses a quart every 1800 miles..,
but my '67 Camaro uses a quart every 300-500 depending how hard i drive it....

 

[Pepsi90919]

DO NOT use synthetic oil. It's not recommended for high-mileage cars that haven't been using them all along. It is much thinner, and it will seep pasts the worn gasket surfaces. I've seen cars with similar mileage change to synthetic, and they developed a ton of seepage

YMMV. my 92 bonneville with the 3800 has 261,000 km on it and i now use mobil 1. it does not leak or burn oil and uses maybe a splash of oil in 2000 km.